Wood & Cork

On Saturday we started installing our oak flooring in the master bedroom. Logan came over to lend his expertise and Willy was also there to help. We got a pretty early start and began by cleaning the subfloor and rolling out the felt paper. The 15 lb. paper will act as a vapor barrier. Next, we snapped chalk lines to keep everything square. And here's the first board that was put down…The boards look better than we could have imagined. It's still amazing to think they came from monstrous white oaks on our property. We installed the boards random width and random length. The widest boards are 9 inches all the way down to 3. Jay gave us a guide to follow that went something like 73545678567459 and so on. The numbers were crossed off as the boards were laid across the room.Todd hammered the floor nailer while Logan and Willy worked to get the boards ready and cut to the right length. Here's Willy jigsawing away…And here's what happens when you don't wear gloves and swing a hammer around for about 2 hours…Ouch! It's not good when you get blisters over blisters.There, that's better. While the oak was going down in the master bedroom, Erin was laying the cork tiles in the master bathroom. The tiles went down pretty quickly with the wood adhesive. The little mosaic "pennies" tore off rather easily to work around corners, the tub and our future toilet. The hard, pain in the butt part will probably be the grouting.Here are several more shots of the bedroom progress…Later in the day, when the bedroom was complete, Kelly and River stopped in to check things out. River gave his approval and played with Mimi.